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THE RARE BOOK MARKET TODAY.

The text of an address originally given at the annual meeting of the Yale Library Associates in 1999, this essay was intended to follow in the tradition established by Gordon Ray, who wrote three pieces about the American rare book market in 1965, 1974, and 1984. Ray drew on his many acquaintances among collectors, booksellers, librarians, and auctioneers to paint an image of the market at a moment in time, and I tried to do the same in this piece. The address was given again at the John Carter Brown Library in 2000, where it was filmed by C- SPAN 2; this version amazingly continues to pop up on that channel to this day.